


Someone to Stay

by jarynw02



Category: Naruto
Genre: Kakashi POV, One Shot, but like ... if you haven't seen it why are you here, death of minato and kushina, give the guy a break - Freeform, i say after writing a scene about his unending pain and grief, kakashi has the saddest backstory ever, like for fuck's sake come on, literally just me venting some angst after seeing a sad tiktok, major angst, shippuden spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26473639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarynw02/pseuds/jarynw02
Summary: Kakashi sees the red ears of the Kyuubi peeking over the treetops fade away into the seal far off in the distant forest... and goes searching for his sensei.*warning: i cried writing this*
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Namikaze Minato, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Kushina, Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	Someone to Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this Tiktok](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJAwrfre/) and got really emotional and wrote this to vent it out.

The lull comes before the work is done. Flickers of the last fires fade into shadows in the glint of passing metal on shinobi sweeping through the village streets. Civilians are all safely tucked away, low ranked ninja guarding them while the mid-ranks scour the affected infrastructure for any fallen or any missing threats. Jounin line the walls of the village while he’s clinging to ceramic rooftops, a shunshin distance from the Hokage’s office despite the lacking presence of the Hokage himself. 

Everything is beginning to settle. 

However, Hatake Kakashi cannot seem to look away from the treetops, even as his uncovered Sharingan leeches his chakra in pulsing waves. Because out there… Out there is the last place he spotted the burnt orange ears of the beast let loose on the last dregs of his home. 

There’s movement at his ten o’clock, whispers and brittle, temporary commands given. Kakashi is not a sensor, but he recognizes a few familiar chakra signatures anyway: Genma, Tenzo, the Uchiha heir. They are blips on his radar and mercifully distant. His heartbeat is much too slow; It rolls through his blood in breaking waves-- a brutal, heavy pressure aching all the way through to his limbs. 

He moves before anyone can tell him otherwise. 

Dropping to the streets below, weaving through the shadows-- nothing he has to do to slip through the village gates is difficult or unusual. He has long been made a creature of dust, a breath of wind on an unsuspecting shoulder, and this is no different. The trees blur in his peripherals, his vision locked on to that place so far away in the depths of the Fire Country woods. He’s rapidly losing chakra, crushing himself with the speed he demands of himself as he flies from branch to branch, but he can’t let himself lose the target in the distance. 

There’s a moment of suspension, as he leaps through the night, when time slows and something in his chest chokes on an invisible fog of ruthless anticipation. It’s as if he’s passed a forbidden boundary and the forest itself begs him away, begs him to turn back and return to where he came from.

Kakashi eases his pace until a clearing appears ahead. 

Then he stops.

Breathless. 

It’s fitting, some part of him thinks, that he’s seen the deaths of everyone close to him firsthand. He’s stubborn, he knows, and it’s as though the Sage knows it too-- guaranteeing that Kakashi will see every pair of eyes he’s ever held precious turned into fading glass, all as empty and cold as he is. 

He doesn’t remember dropping into the grass or walking across the field, pulled in by the magnetism of his sensei long after his soul has left his body. 

_ Kakashi-kun, you know that every time you’re late to Kushina’s dinners it only makes her want to invite you more.  _

It’s better that they’re together, even in this, he’s sure. His knees hit the soft earth, damp with the blood of his last two precious people. His gloved hand shakes as he reaches for long, red hair to tuck it safely behind her ears, slipping her eyes closed in the process. 

_ Kakashi-kun! If you think I won’t chain you to the couch to make you spend the night you’re a bigger idiot than I thought, ya know! _

His arms catch him from falling between them and, distantly, he realizes his shaking ribs must be sobs. He’s  _ sobbing _ . He hasn’t sobbed since… 

He’s breaking. He knows it. But he can’t hear anything, like it’s all tunneled away from him in this new world without Sensei and Kushina-san. It’s nice, almost-- to feel so far away from the world, from reality. Let his hearing be gone. The Sage can have it along with everything else he’s ever taken from Kakashi. 

He starts to crawl and he hates himself for it. He crawls between them, assuring himself that he’ll reunite them as soon as he can, as soon as he’s done… Minato-sensei is face down and Kakashi touches his cheek, the quaking thing in his chest rocking through him and shaking his vision as he swipes a thumb across and slowly closes ocean eyes. 

_ You should visit more, Kakashi-kun. You’re family.  _

His elbows give out. He’s not strong enough. He’s never strong enough. He tells himself that it’s cold, that he’s tired, he’s losing chakra - that no one is around to see him weep - and he curls himself up against his sensei’s chest. It’s juvenile, he knows. He’s fourteen. Things like this are worse than humiliating, they’re shameful, but he can’t stop himself. He can’t stop himself from this last moment with them. 

He doesn’t know he’s crying until the swelling around his eyes aches. 

And then sound breaks back into his world. 

There’s… crying. 

He’s not the only one crying. 

Huh. 

Stiff and bone-scraping, he turns his neck to the sound, refusing to linger on Kushina-san in the periphery as he notices the ritual dias raised beside them. All at once, he remembers. Kushina-san was pregnant. 

Naruto. 

A heartbeat passes, then two and three. 

He needs to get up. He needs to go to Naruto. He needs to secure the Hokage’s son. He needs to secure Minato-sensei and Kushina-san’s son. He needs to flare for backup. He needs to return to the village with Naruto. He needs to find the Sandaime. He needs to…

He wants to lay back down. 

He wants to lay back down with his sensei. He wants to lay back down between the last two people who treated him like family, who cared for him, who still treated him like a teenager, like a child. He wants to lay down between them and stay. 

He wants to die with them. 

_ I miss them too, Kakashi-kun. _

But Naruto stops crying. He stops crying and Kakashi hardly notices.

Until he coos. 

Naruto coos and then he laughs and Kakashi pounces up in fear that something is  _ there  _ making the baby change and react, but there’s nothing and no one in the clearing but the four of them. 

Kakashi’s hand falls steady on Minato-sensei’s chest unbidden, like it belongs to another person, and he curls it into a fist before slamming it into the grass as hard as he can, but it’s barely enough to ruffle the blades of grass. Something yawns open inside him, gnawing and clawing its way through his gut and up his ribs and it tightens around his throat and breaks open from his lips. 

He rises. 

Naruto has Minato-sensei’s hair and those same bright, piercing blue eyes that shatter every refined wall Kakashi has poised around his heart since he was a child. The swirl on his stomach is fading away, his little limbs jutting out in awkward timing as he welcomes himself into the world. 

What a sad, sad world that is waiting for Naruto. 

Kakashi settles Minato-sensei closer to his wife before approaching their son. 

His fingers settle on the edge of the makeshift crib. 

He’s bleeding-- the tightly wound coil of grief that’s burning inside him is ripping him open and dripping all over him, painting him in the deep, dark red of all the dried blood on his hands and the omnipresent blackness of the end that haunts him every time he closes his eyes. 

Naruto wiggles on his cushion in the moonlight. 

A shuddering breath whispers out of him and Kakashi closes his eyes.

Naruto should be at home, Kushina-san should be glowing with her arms wrapped around him, and Minato-sensei should be standing tall over them, brimming with fatherly pride. 

Rin and Obito should be knocking on the front door, eager to visit their new otouto. 

And Kakashi should be home with his own father.

His father should still be a hero. 

A squeak opens his eyes.

Naruto is watching him-- watching him with eyes that drown Kakashi into the ocean of blue that look up at him to say,  _ what now, nii-san? _

Another sob cracks through Kakashi’s chest. 

But then he’s moving again, moving without thinking like he’s done ever since he crossed the boundary of the forest’s grief. His too thin hands slip beneath Naruto’s head and back, his shaking fingers now blissfully hidden as Kakashi brings his too weak arms into his chest to cradle the infant. 

He’s so small, so trusting. 

He curls up against Kakashi the moment he settles him against his chest. 

Others will come for them eventually. Others will find them. They’ll come and they’ll take Minato-sensei and Kushina-san home. They’ll report their deaths to the Sandaime. They’ll explain the baby in Kakashi’s arms. 

But they won’t take him from Kakashi. 

No one will ever take him from Kakashi. 

Not like everyone else has been taken from him. 

The monster in Kakashi roars and snarls and weeps into the gentle night breeze, but he remains there, in the clearing, clinging to Naruto even as the baby drifts off into sleep against his collar. 

_ Are you ready to be Kakashi-nii?! Naruto will love you, grumpiness and all! Be a good big brother, ya know? Keep him out of trouble, but help him into it every now and then-- that’s what big brothers are for! They knock their otoutos around a bit, but raze the world against anyone else who picks on em, ya know? He’s gonna need you, Kakashi-kun!  _

No, Kakashi thinks. 

Naruto needs the village, needs the legacy of his parents, needs the future to welcome him with an open embrace. 

It’s Kakashi who is barely holding it together. 

Who isn’t holding it together.

It’s Kakashi that needs Naruto. 

So he’ll stay. 

He’ll stay and he’ll guard Naruto, now, while they wait for reinforcements to arrive, and later, when the two of them are the only ones left in the world. 

Kakashi will stay. 

And when the clearing fills with anbu, when Minato-sensei and Kushina-san are taken away and he’s led back to the village on slow, dragging feet empty of chakra, Kakashi stays with Naruto. When they report to the Third Hokage, Kakashi stays with Naruto, holding him gently to his chest. When arrangements are made for Naruto, Kakashi stays, learning to dress and change the baby. When the Sandaime challenges Kakashi’s age against his wishes, Kakashi leaves everything else behind to stay with Naruto. 

When the sun sets on October 11th, Kakashi settles Naruto into a secondhand crib beside the lone bed in his apartment and shifts away to lean into the shadows of a corner of the bedroom. 

From that day and for every day after - for the first time in Kakashi’s too short life - Kakashi stays. 


End file.
